


B for Blue, B for Good Luck

by madeinessos



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Be Careful What You Wish For, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Unhealthy Relationships, what's in a name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-19 04:14:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19967863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeinessos/pseuds/madeinessos
Summary: Or is it?Fatima never told anyone about the girl in the water who promised her three wishes.





	B for Blue, B for Good Luck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [primeideal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/gifts).



> I tried to weave some semblance of your tags "Magic Through Music" and "Consensual But Not Safe or Sane." I hope I succeeded in some way. :D

Fatima never told anyone about the girl in the water. It was their secret. Fatima only needed to keep the secret, only needed to be less special, and in return the girl in the water allowed her to make three wishes.

It all sounded wonderfully easy.

Fatima remembers squatting by the shaded bank of the stream, her frilly white dress crumpling. “Will they really come true?” she said, then quickly added, “If this is a joke you can tell me. I love jokes.”

Specifically, jokes that made Fatima laugh. Not stupid ones which wasted her time.

The girl in the water laughed. She had a long laugh, the kind that seemed to start deep in her belly before bubbling up to her throat. In fact, everything about her was long: her black hair, her smile, her brown neck, and her willowy limbs splashing in the clear waters.

“Of course it is real,” said the girl in the water. “You will see. Make a wish right now, and you will see.”

Fatima narrowed her eyes. Never talk to strangers; all her teachers always said that. “What’s your name, then?”

The girl’s smile grew longer. “Oh, but wishing to know my name counts as a wish.”

Fatima chewed on her lip. She weighed her wishes whilst the afternoon sun mellowed and the deep green leaves from the trees stirred and those scattered on the ground crackled. She weighed her wishes whilst the girl in the water, humming, languidly swam nearer to the bank. The girl’s eyes were big and dark, like sunlit black coffee. Fatima thought them very pretty, as pretty as the girl. So in the end Fatima decided that she wanted to have the three wishes and she also wanted to have the girl’s name.

“Are you sure?” the girl asked again after Fatima had already told her yes.

“I already told you,” Fatima said with a sigh. She was becoming rather impatient. She’d already made up her mind. And she disliked repeating herself. “Yes.”

“Well.” The girl in the water smiled her long smile. “My name is Bona.”

 _Bona_ , thought Fatima.

Bona hoisted herself up to sit on the grassy bank, very near Fatima. She gathered her curls into a long thick rope before squeezing the water out of it. Her pale blue dressing gown stuck wetly to her skin. Bona looked very grown up indeed, capable to make wishes come true, but almost everyone seemed grown up to Fatima’s eleven years.

After a moment, Fatima said, “That’s easy. You said this isn’t a joke.”

“Oh, this is very serious.”

“But this is like – like – it’s like if I gifted someone a cream cake I was about to eat but remembered it’s a special day and I hadn’t thought about a gift yet and I was already holding a cream cake.”

Bona laughed. “Speaking from experience, are we?”

Fatima nodded.

It had been the last cream cake in the box. A very pretty cake, with fruit and cream, and smelled richly of rosewater. And it had come with a very pretty box. But, just in time, Fatima had remembered that it was Mother’s birthday, so she’d had to reluctantly close her mouth and lower her hand that was eagerly clutching the cream cake. She’d given Mother the gift whilst still licking her fingers. Mother had been in her study, sunshine pouring in from the big window by her desk, a half-empty cup of coffee still steaming beside her porcelain pen jar. She hadn’t looked up from her letter, had only said, “Go to your nanny. Tell her you’ll have a bath before the party.”

“I want to make my second wish now,” Fatima blurted out.

Bona stopped humming. “Go on.”

“I wish –” she began, and was appalled to find that her throat had somehow, stupidly, dried up. “I wish – I wish my mother loved me.”

Then Fatima cleared her throat.

She squinted busily at the stream waters. It was very pretty, how they looked green one moment, silver the next, and blue after.

Bona flopped on to the grass, flat on her back. She was smiling softly. “All right. Does she like you, your mother? Does she like you at least?”

Fatima shrugged. “I think so. Maybe.”

“You can hold my hand. Come here, I will hold your hand.”

“Why?”

“I am told it can be a comforting gesture.”

Fatima hesitated. But only in the moment it took for her to blink.

Then she walked over and sat next to Bona. Bona’s hand was longer, and soothingly cool, with droplets still clinging on it. Some of the fallen leaves clung on to Bona’s wet hair as well.

They were silent for a while. Bona was humming as she gazed at the stream. Fatima was unabashedly staring at Bona.

“Can I ask my third wish now?”

Bona gently squeezed her hand. “As long as you know that it will be your last wish?”

“From the world?” challenged Fatima. “Ever? What if I wished a birthday cake from the cook?”

Bona was laughing, though Fatima hadn’t said anything funny. She twined their fingers. “You last wish from me, dear Fatima.”

Fatima snatched her hand back. “How did you know my name?”

“Your locket. It has your name, and I can read.”

That made sense.

After a beat, Fatima said, “Does my mother love me now, then?”

Bona settled her hands on her stomach and peered up at Fatima. Her lips were a set in a long curl. “Well, you can go to her now and find out. But yes, she does love you now. You will see.”

Fatima considered this for a moment.

Then she decided to be cunning. “No. I’ll ask my third wish before I go. I’ll ask right now.”

Bona grinned up at her. “All right.”

“I wish,” said Fatima, “I had good luck all the time.”

*

That afternoon, Fatima took her time walking back home.

Behind her Bona’s hums faded into the breeze. Ahead of her the wooded path yawned out into a relentless stretch of green, farms rolling into farms, and in the distance, nestled in a lantern-lit grove, stood the house of Fatima’s grandparents.

Mother visited here yearly. She always brought with her a midnight blue briefcase and a sullen Fatima.

“Will you be here tomorrow?” she’d asked Bona.

And Bona had turned her leaf-wreathed head, saying, “I am always here.”

*

That afternoon, the sky seemed a brilliant shade of blue. Fatima spent most of the walk home happily squinting at it.

It was the blue of a sky washed clean by the morning rain. She remembers thinking that it was a crisp blue, a blue that promised possibility, or even good luck.

*

Fatima believed in luck.

Specifically, in her luck. It could be judged as good luck even before she’d made her third wish. Stupid things or annoying things or even bad things had happened, but it always worked out in the end.

That had to be her own good luck.

Mother, though, believed in her own fate. She carved out her place in the world with her own hands, she always said, God and country be damned. She left nothing to chance, she always said.

And Fatima was only a minor point in the path of Mother’s fate or purpose.

*

That afternoon she went to Mother first.

“You will see,” Bona had promised.

It took Fatima some time to get to Mother. The house was very big. It was also very old. Grandfather had it built just after he’d moved here, after Grandmother had bought the endless green outside. Inside the house, though, Fatima had to walk past endless dark wood and dark stone, past endless dark blue and muted cream. Up a hulking and carpeted staircase which ate her footsteps. Past oil portraits of her grandparents from decades ago: a lean man with a wide halo of tight black curls and a wider smile on his pale-gold face; and a wide-hipped woman with her thick hair pulled back in an elaborate braid, her orange-painted and dimpled smile striking against her dark brown face.

At last Fatima reached the end of the second floor corridor.

She took a deep breath.

She raised her hand.

When she knocked on the heavy wood, it was miraculously flung open by Mother.

Fatima gaped.

Mother wasn’t busy behind her desk. Mother was looking at her. Looking directly at her! Like she was really seeing Fatima.

Fatima gripped her dirty skirt, palms sweaty with excitement. It was true. The wishes were true. Bona was right.

“Where on earth have you been?” said Mother. She was frowning. “What happened to your dress? Has Nanny seen you? Come here.”

She hurried Fatima into the study and slammed the door.

Dazed, but pleased, Fatima shuffled after Mother.

She stared some more in awe. She tried to see if there was any sign of magic on Mother now. But there was no glowy light or any of that sort.

Mother was putting back books and papers into her briefcase. She was a tall woman. Above all, she was stern. Her tight curls had been severely straightened by hot combs and pulled back into a black bun at her nape. Her skin, a very pale brown, seemed to pale even more against her black starched high collar. But most importantly, her dark grey eyes kept glancing over at Fatima.

Mother removed her glasses. The case for it went into the briefcase last.

For a breathlessly still moment she surveyed Fatima in a way which strongly brought to mind being hauled in front of her form mistress.

But Mother only smiled thinly and said, “Let’s have you cleaned up.”

Fatima nodded, rapt.

Then Mother took her briefcase in one hand and Fatima in the other, and strode out of the study to fire Fatima’s nanny.

*

The bathroom door was ajar, so from the bubble-filled tub Fatima could hear Mother and her grandparents arguing.

“She’s always playing around, this isn’t anything new,” Grandmother was saying. “Really, Oliva, that’s uncalled for. Really, now.”

Mother’s voice was curt as ever. “Fatima’s a growing girl. She’ll be twelve in a few months. I won’t have irresponsible caretakers looking after her.”

“Ah,” said Grandfather.

“Leave it,” said Mother. “I’ll take care of this.”

Fast footfalls, and then Mother was back in the bathroom. Fatima blinked through her coconut-scented shampoo. Mother walked over and swiped at the bubbles dripping from Fatima’s forehead to the bridge of her nose.

“That’s the tear-less shampoo?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Good. Take care of your eyes.”

Mother swiped some more coconut-scented bubbles with a sort of tenderness. Then she fished for Fatima’s hand amongst the bathtub bubbles and gave it a gentle squeeze.

If Bona’s hand was long and soothingly cool, Mother’s hand was simply engulfing.

*

Mother was holding Fatima’s hand when they boarded the aeroplane back to the city.

Mother’s hands were gloved with the softest black cotton. She used gloves in public places, especially when travelling, like how some people used socks. Mother hated getting sick. Mother hated being disturbed from her work.

But once back in their town house, Mother surprisingly went shopping with Fatima for her school things. Fatima spent a happy if tiring day trying to keep up with Mother’s heavy-heeled strides, being bundled by Mother into bookshops and shoe shops. Mother even bought her a wide straw hat with a silk ribbon and red wax fruits.

Mother was holding Fatima’s hand when, at the end of the shopping day, they went to the hairdressers’ and bought a big jar of scented oil.

“For what?” said Fatima.

“Your hair, of course.”

Then Fatima was pressed onto a chair, where she alternated between fidgeting and scowling at her reflection.

After about two hours, the hairdresser put down the comb and the oils and the hair creams. Mother put down her newspaper and appeared in the mirror behind Fatima. The women made satisfied murmurs now that Fatima’s tight curls, the fluffy halo she’d inherited from Grandfather, was oiled flat and pulled back into a braid. It made her beige forehead look very there and her dark eyes very big.

Mother was smiling approvingly. “She looks just like me, doesn’t she?”

Fatima smiled back, although she still hadn’t decided if she liked her hair like this.

But when they stepped out of the hairdressers’ Mother was still holding Fatima’s hand. So she figured that she might learn to like it. In time. Maybe.

*

Mother was holding Fatima’s hand when they returned to her grandparents’ house the next year.

And the next.

And the one after that.

At certain points Fatima asked, “May I go for a walk?”

And Mother always said, “We’ll take a walk after I finish this.”

“Can we go to the woods?”

“We’ll visit the farms, Fatima. It’s time you learn more about them.”

“Can we visit streams, then?”

*

Mother was holding her hand when Fatima finished school at sixteen.

Even when Fatima tailored her studies for university at seventeen and eighteen. She remained Mother’s shadow. Mother’s constant companion: in the town house, in the country house, in Mother’s glass-walled penthouse office, in Mother’s soirees. And even one time, on a glossy newspaper, which nicknamed Fatima as Mother’s lucky heir.

The constant companion along Mother’s path to Mother’s hand-crafted fate.

It was too much.

It was not enough. There was nothing special about any of this. There was nothing special about being known only as the daughter, only as the shadow.

Mother’s hand was engulfing, and Fatima realised that she had to grow into it.

She’d grown into her gloves and her socks. Surely she can do it with this as well.

*

“And have you?” asks Bona. “Have you grown into it, dear Fatima?”

Her long fingers are running through Fatima’s brittle hair. Soothingly cool. Droplets are still clinging on to Bona’s hand, but some of them flick down to kiss Fatima’s cheek, Fatima’s upper lip. Stream water. Green and silver and blue. Bitter and fresh. The shaded grass of the bank feels soft beneath Fatima. And Bona's humming brings her back to that particular afternoon nearly twenty years ago.

But there are new things too. Fatima’s new address being the house nestled in the lantern-lit grove. Fatima’s head pillowed on Bona’s lap. The villa in the middle of the wood; Fatima had it built a year ago.

A retreat villa, Fatima calls it.

“Why would you need it?” Mother snapped when Fatima first brought it up. Mother, who has streaks of silver in her bun now. “This house, my parents’ house, will be yours. These lands will be yours. If you build a retreat house, build it in a reasonably distant place.”

“This is reasonably distant when it comes to you, Mother. Leave it. God!”

Fatima remembers leaping from her chair and storming out of the second-floor study, nearly upending Mother's cup of sunlit black coffee in the process.

To Bona's question, Fatima only curls her mouth wryly. “I don't know, do I have good luck?”

Bona smiles, long. Everything about her is long, even the time it takes for her nonexistent laugh lines to appear. “You are here now, are you not?” she tells Fatima. “You are here with me at last. Of course you have good luck.”

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> You're welcome to suggest if I should edit or add tags. :D


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